Israel Matzav

Because of Jerusalem's religious, ethnic and political complexities, there is international pressure to prevent Israeli sovereignty over its eastern parts. Isolation and sacrifice will be needed to retain sovereignty over the most symbolically and historically important parts of the capital.

But the nation has not proved - in the way it has gone about making Jerusalem its "undivided and eternal" capital in the last 39 years - that it really wants to fulfill its vows.

The Israeli government, for example, does not deal with purchasing Jewish property in the City of David and other quarters, which have been held by Arabs since the Old City fell in the War of Independence. Organizations relying mainly on contributions are forced to purchase the properties by means of tricks and covert stratagems. This is not only because of the pressure exerted on the Arab owners but mainly because the Jewish media is fighting a holy war against allowing Jews to live in houses that have been returned to their owners. For if those houses, like those in the Yemenite Quarter in the City of David, are returned to the Jews and they lived in them, that part of the city could not be used as the Palestinian capital - a holy cause by all means. And then what would we do?

As Uri Zvi Greenberg wrote in 1948: "Israel without the mountain wouldn't be Israel."